Shoving sweeping statements and apologetic commiseration aside, Philip Yancey follows up his bestselling book Where is God when it hurts? with a very different approach to pain than we routinely encounter. In this book, he chooses to travel through the 'land of suffering' and tell us what he's learnt. It is an approach that is inviting from the outset as the reader pictures him not as someone wise speaking from a podium at a seminar about grief, but as a fellow traveller on the road of suffering that has in some way marked and scarred us all. His candour and his unwillingness to simply 'solve' pain would likely strike a chord deep in the heart of someone coming to terms with incomprehensible pain.

The title itself makes it very apparent that he knows this question doesn't just 'goes away' with an easy answer. He relates his encounters with people who have experienced unmitigated misery – from natural disasters to terminal cancer – and remarkably distils their experiences to show us God at work in their lives. He reminds us that as short-sighted and fallible humans, 'we're concerned with how things turn out; God seems more concerned with how we turn out' and that 'pain redeemed impresses more than pain removed'. It is challenging read, whether you're in the midst of suffering, helping someone through it or exploring big questions.